1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method and apparatus for providing GPS based vehicle warning and location information to a vehicle operator.
2. Description of the Related Art
Emergency vehicles need to travel quickly and safely through traffic in order to get to a destination. Conventional emergency vehicles use either sirens or emergency lights, or both, in order to get to the destination quickly and safely. It is often the case that a driver who is on the same road or a nearby road as the emergency vehicle is not made aware of the emergency vehicle's presence. This may be the case when the driver has poor hearing, is listening to the car radio, is on his or her car phone, etc. When this occurs, it may result in a dangerous situation when the emergency vehicle approaches the unaware driver, which may result in the driver causing an accident with the emergency vehicle or with another nearby vehicle on the road.
Also, when an emergency vehicle comes to an intersection, it is important that all vehicles approaching the intersection in different directions are made aware of the approaching emergency vehicle. Again, some drivers may not be aware of the sirens and emergency lights of the emergency vehicle, and this may result in an accident occurring with the emergency vehicle and/or other vehicles at or near the intersection.
There have been some solutions proposed to address this problem. One solution has been to use optical detectors at an intersection that detect light signals emitted from an approaching emergency vehicle, whereby the optical detectors would manipulate the traffic signal for oncoming traffic. One drawback to this solution is the lack of warning when an emergency vehicle is coming from behind a motor vehicle.
Another solution has been to use a radar detector, which would detect a signal transmitted from an emergency vehicle. One drawing to this solution is that false triggering of the radar may result in a driver turning off the radar detector out of frustration. Furthermore, the location and distance of the emergency vehicle would not be made available to the driver with this solution.
Yet another solution is to have the emergency vehicle transmit a radio frequency (RF) signal at a predetermined frequency or frequency range. In this case, each motor vehicle would be equipped with an RF receiver which would receive the RF signal output by the emergency vehicle when the emergency vehicle is traveling to its destination. A further enhancement to this solution would be to utilize GPS in order to provide information as to the location of the emergency vehicle relative to the motor vehicle, whereby that information would be used by a microcontroller in order to determine the location of the emergency vehicle with respect to the driver's vehicle. The emergency vehicle's location would be displayed at the motor vehicle by way of one of four indicator lamps that are in the driver's view area (e.g., on the dashboard). Actuation of a first lamp would indicate that the emergency vehicle was somewhere ahead of the driver's vehicle, actuation of a second lamp would indicate that the emergency vehicle was somewhere to the left of the driver's vehicle, actuation of a third lamp would indicate that the emergency vehicle was somewhere to the right of the driver's vehicle, and actuation of a fourth lamp would indicate that the emergency vehicle was somewhere behind the driver's vehicle.
The above solution using both GPS signals and an RF transmitter and RF receiver is described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,339,382, issued to Donald Arbinger et al., which is incorporated in its entirety herein by reference. However, even with the Arbinger et al. solution, a driver is not provided precise information as to the exact location of the emergency vehicle, and so the driver may not choose the best streets to travel through in order to evade the emergency vehicle and to evade the snarled traffic that typically occurs on streets that the emergency vehicle travels on.